National Poetry Slam holds in Abuja

According to the SlamMaster of the ALS, Ken Ike Okere, the national slam will feature performance poetry from poets across the country who will converge in Abuja. The Slam Champion will have a prize money of at least N100, 000. Not less than N350, 000 will be distributed as prize money courtesy of ALS’ partners, […]

According to the SlamMaster of the ALS, Ken Ike Okere, the national slam will feature performance poetry from poets across the country who will converge in Abuja. The Slam Champion will have a prize money of at least N100, 000. Not less than N350, 000 will be distributed as prize money courtesy of ALS’ partners, The African Poet Organisation. Interested contestants, he said, should register for free at the Abuja Literary Society or The African Poet facebook pages, or email: [email protected] .

Poetry Slam, he said, is a popular, peer-judged poetry competition, wherein poets are judged for content and rendition. Judges are selected randomly from the audience and given score cards. The aim is to make poetry popular, accessible and entertaining; and in many countries this has been achieved with Slam poetry. Audiences also enjoy poetry slams immensely, usually feeling both entertained and enriched by the quality of poetry and presentation.

The ALS is indeed Nigeria’s most trendy and consistent literary organization with nearly 50 readings and events yearly in Nigeria’s Capital city. Founded in I998, ALS set for itself the task of generating and sustaining a literary culture, and the creation of an alternative literary-based entertainment, in Nigeria’s nascent and art-starved Federal Capital City. It is doing very well in these respects.

In its six years of history, the Abuja Poetry Slam has successfully won to itself hundreds of converts who anxiously look forward to it every other quarter. While the very first edition of the slam was won in April 2006 by Halima Ali, then a youth Corps member serving in the FCT, other winners have included Dekmankind, Ford Manuel, Storyteller, Ekene Atusiubah, Toby, Ifueko, Gospel Emakuno and Simon Abiodun.

The poetry slam is no doubt a major boost to literary entertainment in the FCT as it has become a major point of call for the literati.